How I memorized Psalm 27 (14 verses) in 5 - 10 minutes

Memorizing Poetry, Speeches, Books
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Hello, this is Stefanos and about a month ago, I found the best (for me and why not for you) method to memorize text verbatim and with a really nice speed (particularly if it was my first time applying this method). As the title states and for my first time ever, I memorized Psalm 27 (14 verses) in 5 -10 minutes. I have never been able to memorize text with that speed. But enough of me talking, I came here to share my method. I say “my” method, because 4 years of searching the Internet, I haven’t found the same anywhere.

So, let’s say that you have to memorize this:

Psalm 27(NKJV)

1 The Lord is my light and my salvation;
Whom shall I fear?
The Lord is the strength of my life;
Of whom shall I be afraid?

2 When the wicked came against me
To eat up my flesh,
My enemies and foes,
They stumbled and fell.

3 Though an army may encamp against me,
My heart shall not fear;
Though war may rise against me,
In this I will be confident.

4 One thing I have desired of the Lord,
That will I seek:
That I may dwell in the house of the Lord
All the days of my life,
To behold the beauty of the Lord,
And to inquire in His temple.

5 For in the time of trouble
He shall hide me in His pavilion;
In the secret place of His tabernacle
He shall hide me;
He shall set me high upon a rock.

6 And now my head shall be lifted up above my enemies all around me;
Therefore I will offer sacrifices of joy in His tabernacle;
I will sing, yes, I will sing praises to the Lord.

7 Hear, O Lord, when I cry with my voice!
Have mercy also upon me, and answer me.

8 When You said, “Seek My face,”
My heart said to You, “Your face, Lord, I will seek.”

9 Do not hide Your face from me;
Do not turn Your servant away in anger;
You have been my help;
Do not leave me nor forsake me,
O God of my salvation.

10 When my father and my mother forsake me,
Then the Lord will take care of me.

11 Teach me Your way, O Lord,
And lead me in a smooth path, because of my enemies.

12 Do not deliver me to the will of my adversaries;
For false witnesses have risen against me,
And such as breathe out violence.

13 I would have lost heart, unless I had believed
That I would see the goodness of the Lord
In the land of the living.

14 Wait on the Lord;
Be of good courage,
And He shall strengthen your heart;
Wait, I say, on the Lord!

(Step 1) This step is the most important. In this step you have to already know by heart a verse. Any verse. I don’t care with what method did you learn it, be it by rote, by memory palace, by anything. You have to absolutely know a verse by heart, word for word, for this method to work. This could even be the first verse of our example. You learn perfectly word for word the first verse of Psalm 27 and then you continue to step 2.

(Step 2) OK, for our example I will use the first verse of Psalm 27 which says:

The Lord is my light and my salvation;
Whom shall I fear?
The Lord is the strength of my life;
Of whom shall I be afraid?

Now, what you have to do, is to take every word of that verse and make it a clear image in your mind. After you do that, practice to remember the sequence of the images perfectly. If you forget an image you will be able to bring it back in your memory, by saying the verse in your mind. That is the reason you have to know 1 verse perfectly. The verse is actually your memory palace for the other 13 verses and maybe more. The difference between this memory palace and your home or maybe a journey in your town, is that you create it by the same text you are reading. Let’s go to step 3 and make it more clear for you.

(Step 3) Now that you know your images and their sequence perfectly, take your first image and zoom in it enough to see it big and clear in your mind. For our example the 1st image is created by the word “The”, the 2nd by the word “Lord”, and so on. Now that you zoomed in your first image select 5 places on that image. Do this for the rest of your images. After you finish this task you will be ready with a memory palace of [26 rooms/images (made from the 26 words of our 1st verse) * 5 places in each room/image] = 130 places ready to take not only psalm 27 but more information.

(Step 4) Here is how you move in this super memory palace. You start moving from the first room/image/word of your verse until the last. In each room/image you move something like clockwise in every one of the 5 places you have set, in each one of the images/rooms.

(Step 5) Let’s see how you will store information in this palace. The rule is, that you will put each of the rest of the verses of Psalm 27 in each of the images of your palace. Verse 2 of Psalm 27 will go to the image/room made by the first word of 1st verse(“The”). Verse 3 will go to the image/room made by the word “Lord”. And so on. But first let’s see step 6.

(Step 6) Now that you have your palace ready and set, continue reading the rest of the verses (2,3,…,14) . For each verse find 5 keywords and make each one of them an image, as fast as you can.

(Step 7) Now that you found each verse’s 5 keywords and made each one an image, let’s start storing verse 2. Take that verse’s 5 key-images and start placing each one, in each one of the 5 places, of your 1st room. Repeat the same task for the rest of the verses by putting verse 3 in the second room and so on. If you haven’t already understood, verse 1 is actually your memory palace.

(Step 8) Now, try repeating psalm 27 in your mind by looking at your memories you created.

If you have any questions let me know!

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Great work!

The technique you are using is similar to the one used by the Japanese mnemonist Kikujiro Wadamori. The technique is known as “registering.” You start with something that you already have memorized, and you use that as your starting point for other memories. Wadamori would use famous quotes or lines from songs he knew, and then (just as you have done) attach memories to each word. By thinking of the phrase he then had access to all the memories associated with it. Psalm 27:1 is your register in this case, and is your link to all the other memories, and you access all the other verses through it.

You might have heard of the hymn writer Isaac Watts. He talked about a student who used the pre-memorized works of a classic author to remember approximately 200 names. He just associated each name with the successive words in the lines of the poetry that he had memorized. In that way the student could remember all the names. Once again, registering!

I use this method myself. It’s a great way to keep your memories organized.

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WOW! I love it! Thanks a lot for your answer! I had no idea there was something like this! I will read his book.

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Check of the Lanier Verbatim Memory System. He has similar goals to you:

Might be interesting!

-T…

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I have seen the Lanier Verbatim Memory System but it was too complicated for me. I like it but I have concluded to my latest method because it’s actually a no-brainer and very fast memorization system.

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I am a new on this site…i am from kashmir india…here is no exposure of such memory methods…but i am eager to learn from you all…plz help me i want to learn nd tranismit to other people…i m a teacher by profession…could you plz send me books

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Hi it’s an interesting method. Thank you for sharing. Can you please share one of YOUR IMAGES? I mean an example of your images. Thank you. Though I understand it properly but I want a example to be clear.

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OK. Psalm 27 has 14 verses. So you will take the 1st 13 words from the 1st verse. The 1st verse is already memorized by whatever method you like.

1st word is “The”. Obviously this is not a word with which you can immediately see an image in your mind. I have memorized this Psalm in Greek, so I’ll try my best with English. OK, first let’s think a word from this word. In my mind comes the word “theory”. Theory is still something abstract, but I immediately remember General relativity Theory and then BOOM! Einstein. So let’s use - Einstein on his bike - image for the word “The”

2nd word is “Lord”. That is easy. Just imagine a lord in his castle.

3rd word is “is”. Now it’s 2 in the night here in Greece and I can only think of “Istanbul”.

And here you go, with the rest of the words. Only limit is your imagination which is unlimited.

Now, let’s go to verse 2. From that verse you pick up only 4 - 5 key words and you make each one an image. For example you choose: wicked, eat up my flesh, enemies, foes, stumbled and fell. Make images with these and then remember how the 1st verse starts. “The” “Lord” “is”… So you take “The” and you think, relativity theory, Einstein and after that, you put these images one by one in a place inside your Einstein image, in a sequence that you are sure you will remember. For example put “wicked” on Einstein’s head, for “eat up my flesh” imagine pack-man eating chickens(fleshes) and now make pack-man a 3D yellow ball and put it to Einstein’s bike instead of his bike’s front wheel. So now, the image is Einstein with a “wicked” on his head, (whatever image is this in your mind) on his bike, whose bike has for a front wheel pack-man hunting chickens(fleshes).

Now take the word “enemies” and imagine some very bad people, hunting him.

For the word “foes” comes to my mind “forest”. So take a mini forest and put it between Einstein and his enemies. Einstein is a really good driver, but his enemies “stumbled and fell” in the trees of this mini “forest”.

You do exactly the same for verse 2. Take its 4-5 keywords make them images and put them in a similar way in the image “Lord”. Continue like this with all the verses.

When you are done, you will see that you have created a completely crazy Memory Palace, that for rooms has images from your own imagination and the only reason you call these images “rooms” and all this crazy image-cocktail a “memory palace” and this cocktail has a logical sequence, is because you have just memorized perfectly verse1.

So, you start reciting verse1 and think: “The” “Lord” “is” … you say OH! “The” means “Einstein” (You remember all the images) and after you have done reciting verse1 you recite verse2 based on the images we just made. After that you may not immediately remember the next “room” of your memory palace so you recite again “The” “Lord” aha! “Lord”. You remember all images inside the “Lord” image/room and based on that you recite verse3. And it goes on until the end of the Psalm.

P.S. A good way to start reciting the whole Psalm at once and fast, is practise remembering all your rooms very fast, so that you don’t have to recite verse1 every time you want to remember the next room. Finally, repeat, repeat, repeat because only practise makes perfect!

The thing that I like the most with this technique is that I can put the psalm really fast into my mind and then repeat it from my Super Memory instead of reading and rereading the Psalm over and over again. That actually is recall versus reread.

It makes a HUGE difference!

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Your methods have a lot in common. In particular, using the first sentence/verse as an “index” for other words. Here’s a quick summary of how I understand each (my several page long lanier write-up is posted elsewhere):

LANIER:

  1. Memorise first word of a verse as the “index”
  2. Convert each letter into a memorable person
  3. Have each “person” carry out actions, in a sequence, using 4 sequential words from the verse.
  4. Continue until all the words in a verse have been memorized.
  5. Move to the next verse
  6. Remember a chapter by linking the first first verse words; expand the words into the verses when you want to use them

The Lanier system guarantees verbatim recollection

SKard:

  1. Memorize entire first verse
  2. Analyse key words from following verses into key images
  3. Encode key images, in order, into images of the first verse.

A speedy system for when you trust yourself to “fill the gaps” between key words

I like your system because it is indeed fast and pretty accurate. One suggestion I would make/take from the Lanier system: if you can make your indexer simpler, it might be easier to memorize several chapters. For example, presently you need to imagine the whole first verse to remember chapter 27. It might get difficult to imagine “all the chapters of psalms” if each chapter’s indexer has so many images. If instead you pick one image to remind you of the chapter, it will make it easier to “see” all the chapters in the book. Just link the chapter image to your first-verse complex image indexer so that you can easily expand your images.

In some ways, Lanier’s system already does this–his “street” has the images that remind him of the book and chapter, and the sidewalk has key images to lead him to each verse.

Anyway, interesting stuff!

-tof

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